Do Ethics Really Even Matter?

Palmer Bowman
pb501515@ohio.edu

Do ethics even matter? The short answer is a hearty and obvious yes. I completely agree that being an ethical person and making ethical choices based on reasoning and logic is fundamental to how we grow up and learn as people, but do ethics really matter in today's 24/7 news climate? The answer is certainly not as much as it probably should and that's fine.

We live at a time in which anything televised is better off being assumed as entertainment, even if it is a news outlet.  We can tell ourselves that we are trying to stay up to date on current events but every single outlet has a pretty blatant agenda that is being pushed. Fox News has the right, CNN and MSNBC have the left, but all outlets are treading through muddy water with no definitive certainty of fact.  It might not be the most ethical to lean into confirmation bias for the pursuit of ad revenue and acclaim regardless if information is misleading to the viewers, but the best we can do is try to find a positive way to look at it.

Let me try to boil this down even further. The average person works 40 hours a week. Most jobs are not affiliated with politics in the slightest and when you come home you might want to just watch anything to get your mind off work. Being that we live in an embarrassment of riches in the realm of televised content, you do not have to watch anything if you do not want to. I have friends that watch nothing but The Office. They don't watch a single other show.  They do not keep up with politics and when they finish season 9 they come back to square one and watch it all over again. Why do they watch this? The show makes them laugh they know what they are getting every time and and it makes them feel good. Is that bad? Not at all. Why do certain demographics only watch one news outlet? My guess is the exact same thing. People like having their own thoughts and opinions be reaffirmed. Plus, if it can take your mind off of your day to day job then in my opinion the broadcast was effective.

I will unabashedly admit that I find my news from comedians. Stephen Colbert can go on an emotionally charged rant about our president and I'd still feel more secure with that information that most news sources because I know his main goal is comedy and comedy isn't funny with out truth.  He obviously has to maintain an audience the same way Fox and Friends does but Colbert doesn't have an ulterior motive to spin fact or pedal rhetoric. All he has to do to keep his audience is make them laugh.

The point I would like to make is that these shows need to keep an audience to continue being a show and people want to hear things that reconfirm their already established beliefs.  I one hundred percent believe that being an ethical person is very important from a moral and human standpoint but it might be too far gone to fully correct much of the unethical behavior in our media and politics overnight.  As bleak as it might seem the best we can do is try to remain ethical ourselves and hopefully those who stay ethical get into positions of power in the future.

Courtesy of Medium.com